When Is Future? When Is Now?: Wolf Babe Collective's Curatorial Debut

Wolf Babe Collective made its curatorial debut with When is Future? When is Now? on Saturday, August 10, at Gallery 101 in Ottawa, ON, as part of the 13th annual Asinabka Film & Media Arts Festival. Wolf Babe Collective is a group of four First Nations women and non-binary curators: Joi T. Arcand, Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, Danielle Printup and Tanis Worme. As a collective, their work “centres Indigenous artists and focuses on notions of reciprocity, relationship and community.” [1]

From left: artist Aylan Couchie and curators Tanis Worme, Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, Joi T. Arcand and Danielle Printup at the opening of When is Future? When is Now? at Gallery 101 in Ottawa, ON PHOTO JOCELYN PIIRAINEN
When Is Future? When Is Now? is composed of four film works from the Indigenous Art Collection at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and an installation work commissioned for this exhibition. The exhibition focuses on the shared spaces and experiences of movie watching and considers temporality, agency and community through works by Indigenous artists based across what is currently called Canada. Each of these pieces is an assertion of Indigenous sovereignty, and the curators ask guests to consider whose stories are being told and how we can shape our present and future stories.

“Nostalgic” is my first impression of the exhibition. There are film posters and VHS tapes of well-loved media visible throughout the space, and the exhibition title and introductory panel is presented with an overhead projector. The whirring of the projector and the smell of buttery popcorn brings me back to elementary school, watching projected videos in a dimmed classroom. The stylized font of the introductory panel and presenting the artwork’s extended labels on VHS cases—which guests can hold and read—are further nods to the past.

Aylan Couchie’s installation Overlay of the Land v2 (2024)

The artworks themselves disrupt our perception of time; it is easy to lose ourselves in the immediacy of these films. Multidisciplinary Mohawk artist Melissa General’s Reclamation (2014) is projected on a wall in the first room, and the sounds of the waves of Lake Ontario lapping on the shore are audible. Exploring the interrelatedness of body, land and water, we see General uncover a long red cloak buried in the sand, wrap it around herself and stride away from the camera, twice over—first down a forest path, then into Lake Ontario. The final image is of the cloak resting on both land and water, as though to represent how our engagement with land and water is felt long after we are gone. 

 
Installation view of Tanya Lukin Linklater’s film Slay All Day (2016) INDIGENOUS ART COLLECTION, CROWN-INDIGENOUS RELATIONS AND NORTHERN AFFAIRS CANADA

In the hallway, we find the installation Overlay of the Land v2 (2024) by Nishnaabekwe interdisciplinary artist, curator and writer Aylan Couchie and the short film Slay All Day (2016) by multidisciplinary Sugpiaq artist Tanya Lukin Linklater. Couchie’s installation is part of her series The Acknowledgement Project, in which she aims to bring land acknowledgements more directly into the public eye. Continuing the nostalgic theme, she presents land acknowledgement stickers in an interactive gumball machine. Stickers state either: “Ni Waamjigaadeg Debwewin,” which means “it's time to see the truth” in the Nbisiing Nishnaabemwin dialect or “This Land Runs On Algonquin Time / Immemorial,” asserting the agency of Algonquin Anishinaabeg for both place and time in Ottawa. Meanwhile, Lukin Linklater’s silent short film is projected on the opposite wall; the work is choreographed by Lukin Linklater and performed by Ceinwen Gobert. Contrasting two interpretive movements via a split screen, the choreography responds to Robert J. Flaherty’s silent film Nanook of the North (1922) on the left screen while the right screen depicts a response to the movements of Inuit athletics. Seeing the representation of Inuit strength in Lukin Linklater’s work was heartwarming, especially contrasted with the daintiness of the counterpart movements. Couchie’s installation seems to highlight the irony of Lukin Linklater’s film, that Flaherty’s film is more fitting for a theatre than as a true reflection of Inuit and the North. 

Installation view of Theo Jean Cuthand’s film Reclamation (2018) INDIGENOUS ART COLLECTION, CROWN-INDIGENOUS RELATIONS AND NORTHERN AFFAIRS CANADA

The final two works are presented upstairs in a warm and inviting auntie’s-style living room, complete with characteristic artwork on wall panelling. Reclamation (2018) by filmmaker, performance artist and writer Theo Jean Cuthand, who is of Plains Cree and Scots descent, is resourcefully presented on a modern TV that sits atop a no-longer-functioning classic TV. Cuthand’s documentary-style film depicts a seemingly dystopian future in which White folks abandon Earth for Mars, as the environmental damage here has reached catastrophic levels. The Indigenous folks on Earth have reclaimed previous ways of being and are hopeful for their future—one in reciprocity with the land and filled with radical love. Meanwhile, the film Potato Gardens Band (2018) by visual artist Krista Belle Stewart, a member of the Syilx Nation, is projected on the far gallery wall, visible through mezzanine-style windows and audible with a set of corded headphones. In this work, we see a grassland and hear the ethnographic recordings of Stewart’s great-grandmother Terese Kaimetko singing in the Syilx language nearly a century ago. This work bridges time, reuniting the land with language and song from someone who once lived there, and the sepia tone draws us into the past, as though we are stepping into a memory.

Installation view of Krista Belle Stewart’s film Potato Gardens Band (2018) INDIGENOUS ART COLLECTION, CROWN-INDIGENOUS RELATIONS AND NORTHERN AFFAIRS CANADA

Threading these artworks together, Wolf Babe Collective draws our attention to the shared sovereign arguments made by these Indigenous artists and grounds the exhibition with the presence of Indigenous Peoples. Through these counter-narrative works, the collective welcomes you to sit down for tea and contemplate prevailing notions of time, place and belonging, amongst the comforts of auntie’s home. 

“Community” is my lasting impression of this exhibition.